The brief
A Halloween party at a restaurant for a group of families, with children from about three to nine and their parents staying for the whole thing. That is a harder brief than a single birthday: the programme has to hold a three-year-old, a nine-year-old and a table of adults at the same time, without anyone being talked down to.
What we built
Day of the Dead rather than plastic pumpkins. A hand-painted sugar skull the height of a child standing against the restaurant's red stage curtain, tissue pom-poms in pink and cream overhead, cobweb gauze across the ceiling, and a balloon garland in white, lilac and deep purple with a bat and a ghost floating out of it. A make-up station for anyone who wanted a skull face — and a lot of the mothers did.
How the day went
A host in a skeleton suit, straw hat and purple cape ran it from the front with a microphone, and the room came dressed: a mummy wrapped in bandages, Spiderman, Batman, Elsa, a unicorn, a witch, a girl wearing a hat made entirely of hydrangeas. There was a gingerbread-decorating table with icing bags and sprinkles for the ones who wanted to sit down, dancing and floor games for the ones who did not, and it ended with children and adults flat on their backs on the tiles, laughing, in full make-up.
What the parents got
A Halloween where they were guests rather than supervisors. Their own faces painted, their own photographs, and children who were entertained by somebody else for the entire evening.
